


Herc

by NekoNomi



Series: The Kaiju Creation Project [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Everybody Lives, F/M, Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-04 08:37:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1078885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NekoNomi/pseuds/NekoNomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of all the people in the PPDC, Herc Hanson was the one most likely to have problems with the Kaiju Creation Project.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The steady beeping of the machines was a comfort. As long as those machines beeped, there was still a chance that his son and his best friend might someday wake up. Sometimes, when he fell asleep next to the beds, exhausted by his work, he almost imagined he could still feel his son, still feel that thing between them that had gone beyond words. In the drift, you didn't need words. Though he knew that his son had known, he still regretted sometimes letting the boy stop him when he went to say them aloud. He was a bloke's bloke, and it was hard for him, but still, he regretted never saying aloud that he loved his boy. perhaps, if he ever woke up, he'd tell him that.

\-------------

Herc Hanson was a man on a mission. Chuck and Stacker might be alive, found floating in the middle of the ocean in damaged escape pods not long after the war clock was stopped, but they might also never wake up from the coma they were in. Herc would not let their sacrifice be in vain. He fought each and every attempt to disband the Pan Pacific Defense Corp. He kept the Shatterdome running, despite some very high level protests that it was no-longer needed. Mako and Raleigh, world wide heros after what they had done, supported him. In more ways that one.

More than once, Mako had forced Herc to stop, to eat and rest. More than once, Raleigh had stalked into the office which had once belong to Stacker Pentacost and pulled the reports from Herc's arms and shoved Max's leash into his hands. The bulldog was a great comfort to him as the post-war months slowly moved by. The world was beginning the initial stages of recovery, but Herc was not one of those who was rejoicing and rebuilding. None of the PPDC were.

Each of them dealt with it in different ways. Mako and Raleigh had buried themselves in each other, a bond forged through fire and drift, loss and pain, tying them as close as they could be, almost seeming to be living within each others skin at times, personality traits bleeding through from one to the other. They buried themselves in the Jaeger re-build project too, taking the scraps that had been left after the war and bringing them back into working order, improving them along the way.

Newt and Hermann had buried themselves in their work, a project so tied up in legal garbage and technical mumbo-jumbo that Herc'd had no idea what exactly it was they were doing until it had been far to late to stop them.

As for Herc... He buried himself in paperwork and the mess of the shatterdome. He walked Max and he spent time in the little ward room that held the bodies of two of the greatest heros he had ever known.

\-------------

It had been nearly eight months after the Kaiju project had born it's first fruit, the first live earth created Kaiju. Herc had never seen the creature. He had spent twelve years fighting the Kaiju. He had given his only son into death in order to defeat them. He could not grasp the idea that a Kaiju could be anything but a monster, that they were capable of anything more than mindless destruction.

The click of claws woke him, rousing him from where he had fallen asleep in the chair next to his son's bed. Few ever came here. Few knew that this place was here, or who lay within the beds behind the nondescript door. He opened his eyes, expecting to see Mako coming to bring in something new and bright, or Raleigh coming to sit silent beside Stacker for a time. What he saw, was a creature out of his nightmares.

Six electric blue eyes stared right back at him. The creature chirred softly, tilting it's head as it watched him. The delicate, long muzzled face didn't show much in the way of expression, but the long tendrils along it's back were waving slowly. The long wings were held loose, the four fingered hands held in close to it's chest. The facial ridge was not as prominent as in the Kaiju he was used to seeing but it was there, a low ridge up the length of the muzzle, flareing up high between the eyes and coming down quickly to end at the base of the skull.

It took a step forward and Herc's hands twisted into tight balls. His mouth twisted into a sharp expression of anger. He'd told the scientists not to let their pet monster out of the labs. That it was not only out and about, in here, in the same room as his son, drove anger into the deepest parts of him.

The creature chirred again and stretched it's neck out across the bed to nudge his hand.

\-------------

It was like being in the drift but at the same time, nothing like it at all. It was a mind completely alien to his own, filled with depths that no human could ever hold. And filled so strongly with emotion. He hadn't thought that it was possible for a kaiju to feel, never mind for one to feel as deeply and truly as this one did.

_Eve._

He frowned, not understanding. Unthinkingly, his fingers spread out over the nose of the kaiju. Absently he noted that the mottled skin was surprisingly soft around the hard bone ridge. The feelings kept coming. Unnoticed by either, Newt and Hermann stiffened where they had been standing by the doorway, as Herc's feelings flowed back to them through the bond between themselves and the kaiju.

_Herc. I am Eve._

Oh. The creatures name was Eve. He'd heard that, vaguely. He hadn't paid much attention to what Newt and Hermann were doing with their Kaiju. He'd preferred it that way. The less he knew, the better for the peace of what mind he had left.

 _Trapped inside._ Eve's attention had turned to the two bodies in the beds. Those bright eyes watching the rise and fall of Chuck and Stacker's chests.

"What d'yah mean trapped?" He demanded, looking between the kaiju and the two men who were all that was left of his family.

 _Trapped._ Eve repeated. _I will fix it._ Leaning down, she pressed her nose against Chuck's chest and then against Stacker's. For a long moment everything was still. Eve leaned herself into Herc's hand. Maybe it was because he was a former jaeger pilot. Maybe it was that realisation that Eve was a person too, capable of thoughts and feelings all her own and that the hive-mind did not erase the individual. Maybe it was his own longing, the soothing of the loneliness that had been eating away at him since the end of the war. He was pulled gently into the system of the hive-mind, joinging Newt and Hermann and Eve at the center of something meant to become so much bigger.

\-------------

There was a sharp breath. Blue eyes opened, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling. This was not where he had expected to be. His mouth was dry, rough like sandpaper. Still, he managed to speak.

"Dad?"


	2. Chapter 2

There was a small hospital ward, hidden deep in the depths of the Shatterdome. It was clean and warm, little touches speaking of Mako's involvement in the decoration. But it was still clearly a hospital, with the constant beeping of the machines which were keeping alive the occupants of the two single beds. Only a few knew they were here. Two heros who were thought lost forever in the final fight. Chuck Hansen and Stacker Pentacost. There were no guarentees that they would ever wake up, but the PPDC would be waiting if they ever did.

Though Newt and Hermann, Eve had always been aware of the continued existance of the two men who had sacrified eveyrthing, including their lives, to end the precursor threat. It was inevitable that some day, she would ask to see them.

Hermann's cane tapped against the floor and Newt was uncharacteristically somber as they led their mind-sister into the ward. It turned out that Kaiju were fast growing. At only eight months, Eve had already reached her adult height, though some bits of her were still growing. At six feet tall and nearly twenty two feet long, she was a massive thing, though most of her was tail. Over the milennia her other self had changed, scarred and mutilated and mutated by the precurour experiments. This was her as she was meant to be, as she had been born that first time, and now had been born again.

She entered quietly, only the click of her claws to tell that she was there. There was a man, one other than the two she had expected. He smelt similar to one of those in the bed. She had been told that the younger of the two had a parent. She knew this one, had smelled his scent in places that he had been.

Tilting her head as she looked at him, all of her eyes focused upon the man. Her tendrils waved, showing innocent curiosity as she regarded the unknown man. His hands were balled as he stared back at her, something she knew to be an aggression response. Though she was old and wise in so many ways, but in others she was very young and naive. Despite all the time she had spent with Newt and Hermann, she didn't really understand humans. Then again, from what she had gleaned, Newt and Hermann weren't exactly considered to be normal representations of the human race. Really, she thought that was for the best. Were they more like the technicians and the mechanics, and less like themselves, she would never have been able to connect to them. Their war would still be raging on, and her children naught but pawns sent to die on the human's weapons. Now they, and she, had a chance at life. All because they were who they were.

Gently, she touched the tip of her nose to the man's hand. The first feel was pain, an almost overwhelming outpouring of grief and rage over all that had happened. Her own pains rose to answer. Millennia of being forced to watch as the twisted children that had been begot from her were sent out to fight and die in the name of conquest for those who enslaved them. The echo of the pain felt by everyone in this place. The sorrow at what had been done to the humans, and the unwilling part she had been forced to play in it. The sorrow that these two men whom Newt and Hermann had so much respect for, lay here, hidden within themselves.

_Eve._ She introduced herself. It was considered polite by her people to give their chosen designation once initial mind-touch had been made. After then, you always knew who it was who was reaching for you, for every mind was unique. The man though did not seem to understand. 

_Herc._ She gave the designation she understood to be his. Prompted by a thought pattern from Hermann she then said _I am Eve_ The man seemed to understand that, and she sent relieved thanks back to Hermann for helping her.

The two in the beds caught her attention once more. This was what she had come here for. To see these two men who had survived death. Newt said they were in a coma, that they might never wake up. She was aware that she had senses that the humans did not. Once more she was made acutely aware of this fact as she realised that the humans genuinely could not tell if a person's self was gone or mind-lost or simply hiding within themselves. Of these two, the elder was mind-lost, but the younger was simply hiding. The first would not be so easy to fix, but she could do it. The second was easy, and was the one she would start with.

Gently she touched her nose to the chest of the younger. _Come back._ She called coaxingly to the youngster. _People miss you. Come back. _She felt him respond, begin to rise back to the world that the others inhabited.__

The other was more difficult. She reached deep into his darkness as she pressed her nose against his chest. She felt him stir, but he had buried himself so much deeper than the other. She could not draw him out the way the other had been. Instead she left him milestones, touch points to guide him through his journey back to the waking world.

The task had left her mind-tired. She leaned into Herc's absent minded touch, purring softly as she waited. She could feel him, his bone deep exhaustion mixing with her own. They slipped into each other, the way she might slip into Hermann and Newt. The hive-mind was small, the three of them who now became four. With luck though, they would grow.

"Dad?" The youngest man shifted, spoke. Herc pulled away from her and she let him go. For a long moment she watched them, and then she turned, letting her long tail flick out to touch Herc for a moment as she left, nudging Newt and Hermann out with her. This was private time now, not for them to watch.


End file.
